Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
cnn.com
cnn.com
I think Reddit is just embarrassed that one guy can make an app that's so, so, soooo much better than their slow, cluttered, ugly, expensive app.
I think that app may be the basis of the current Reddit app somewhere deep down inside, but it basically bears no resemblance at this point since Reddit's priority is chasing ad revenue and TikTok style feeds instead of just letting people follow and comment in their communities.
This of course left a gap for a new good iOS client and Apollo was born.
If they bought Apollo I'm sure the same cycle would occur again.
If Reddit adopted Apollo, they would slow it to a messy crawl in 6 months.
Reddits is tracking, Ad revenue, prioritizing cached content and who knows what other priorities have been pushed into it.
Also it’s not like Reddit doesn’t have the resources to both improve their apps usability and focus on tracking, ad revenue, etc.
Not sure if it’s true but it struck me as making sense. The timing is too coincidental.
They (Reddit) claim that this is not expected behavior. Some other people have also reported this. No fixes.
Maybe their devs are jealous of what one guy with freedom to actually create the best thing he can can do, but I really doubt they came up with the idea to charge 100x what imgur charges for similar API calls.
I'd point out that any of third-party reddit app devs have one of the best resumes for whatever's next. They should have their choice of paths, whether that be adapting their codebase to $NEXT_PLATFORM, doing some high profile consulting, going back to a day job, etc. It'd be better if they didn't have to, for sure, but it also isn't career-ending.
Kind of a big deal for me.
That said, Apollo is pretty rad. I hope they figure something out.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36141083
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36162235
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36142285
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36142418
I still can't understand why they would buy a perfectly good app just to replace it.
900,000 total users, if they were all converted to paid users, would cost $1.89 per user, so Apollo could charge $1.99 per month. Or they could charge $2.50 per month as stated above.
This seems reasonable for access to all of reddit and their engineers to maintain it for you?
They'd probably have to charge $10-20/mo just to break even.
It sucks and I still think the developer(s?) would take a pay cut, but it seems like the only viable choice at this point.
There's your problem.
Not all of reddit. You're still blocked out of NSFW content (which will not be accessible over any tier of API).
In Christian's case, if Reddit doesn't change their mind, his best bet is probably to eliminate the free tier, and increase the paid tier pricing. It's worth a shot, but Apollo would probably take such a hit it may no longer be viable as a business.
Ivory has been well-received, but who knows what the numbers are compared to Tweetbot. So this was not a "just swap the API" slam dunk.
Reddit's content isn't special. It's all network effects.
Yes, but they are strong and in place.
Reddit has a LOT of content and users.
Reddit, Tumblr, TikTok, Instagram, etc, all attract a similar type of user but they are different products that engage people in different types of social interactions.
You can't port that.
But, its a ticking time bomb. Your whole business is a derivative of content provided by another company's community. Yet, these alternative apps squeeze in their own advertisements between posts.
I don't think $20 million/year is reasonable at all, but they have been monetizing off free APIs.
When are we going back to owning your own fast, light, redundant hardware so you don't have to charge millions for free APIs that were responsible for all your growth in the first place?
Of course costs play a part in how much revenue you need, but even in the realm of costs it's probably employees rather than servers that's dominant.
you are really just fucked as soon as the giants decide to steal your product, even if they can't compete with your product on usability, features, or marketing. all they have to do is change their pricing.
I am not sure if it is statistically significant but I founded a small tech sub-reddit (~30k users) and from the moderator stats 70% of traffic is from their iOS app.
I used to use 'reddit.com/.compact' which was an actual mobile friendly and light interface, but that was depricated this year and now, like you, I am stuck with old.reddit.com on mobile.
But for 'direct' access basically if I put new.reddit and old.reddit and 'mobile web' whatever that is, the total of all three categories is less than 10%.
I guess also that these stats will not be very accurate for desktop if people are using ublock, ghostery, etc.